birth story - Mary-Alice
The acupuncturist predicted on the 7th that I would go into labor that night or the next day. But there wasn't really anything until the evening of the 8th so I was discouraged. I told The Husband to go ahead to work in the afternoon.
At night, I nursed Pippa down to sleep, and started getting strong contractions. But I felt like the girl who cried wolf so I took about 15 minutes to tell my doula. That was about 9:30. By 10pm, I knew it was the real thing. Basically as soon as The Husband got home, we drove to the hospital.
Unfortunately when I got in I was only 3cm and technically couldn't be admitted yet. The midwife told me to walk around for "a few hours" and then come back, and when I was 4cm I could be admitted. I actually did some of this laboring in a one-stall bathroom just for privacy (it was very clean). I came back about an hour later (~11:30) and I was 6cm. So yeah, lol. Probably if I had been seen even 15 minutes later I would have been admitted.
I was amazed how different the experience was from last time. Last time I was very much GAH NO TOUCHY. This time, I was laughing and joking between contractions, and during contractions I liked getting counterpressure on my back, holding people's hands, etc. I loved having a doula AND my husband there. They were both fabulous.
I lucked out and got the only room with a tub (currently the deluxe ward with the big tubs that they use for water births was closed due to a nursing shortage). Oh my word. Laboring in the tub is sooooo nice. When the pain was too intense for counterpressure, my husband aimed the shower at my lower back and that helped so much. I actually would be interested in a water birth next time based on this.
Around 1:30am, I felt that pushing was going to happen soon. Suddenly, I got really freaked out. Up until now, labor had actually been great. I hadn't even felt tempted for pain medication! Now I was facing pushing! It was moving too fast. I got panicked and started getting obsessed with tearing. I couldn't let go. I was trying to hold the baby back, which is like trying to put duct tape over a charging rhino--you know it's not going to work for long and it's only going to make things worse!
I ended up asking for Entonox (laughing gas/gas and air) and it was absolutely the right decision. I just needed to take the edge off my panic so I could talk myself down. I did Entonox for a few contractions and in between contractions I said "The baby is going to come down. I can push the baby out. This is the way the baby comes out." etc. I won't say I was completely relaxed, but I was able to stop trying to hold the baby in. (I'm glad I was giving birth in Canada, because apparently in the US they don't use gas and air? Is that true, US mamas?)
Pushing was AWFUL. Oh goodness. It was only 10 minutes in real time but it felt ENDLESS. (Last time pushing was an hour, but didn't feel NEARLY as bad.) I probably totally embarrassed myself by repeatedly begging for the midwife to just pull the baby out (with forceps? IDK, it was not really me talking). Pushing the first time was not nearly this bad, pain-wise or emotionally. I was really glad to have the Entonox for the pushing. I think it was bad for two reasons: the amniotic sac didn't break until five seconds before she came out, and pushing on the sac is harder than pushing on a head; and her head was about a centimeter bigger than Pippa's, and when it's the cervix we're talking about, every cm really counts...
Anyway, once the baby was out and they put her on my chest, my first words were "She's enormous!!!" Hahahaha. Actually she's "only" 8lbs 6oz, 20.5" length, 14" head, which is bigger than average but not epically (it's about 85% on the growth chart in all three dimensions). I thought it was funny because everyone said "Oh, the baby will seem so tiny compared to your toddler" but my first reaction was comparing her to newborn Pippa (who weighed a pound less, was a bit longer, and had a smaller head). It was 2:04am on August 9th.
The midwife examined me and things seemed fine. She said I had a minor tear, which she could sew up if I wanted, but also could be left to heal naturally--it would take longer to heal naturally, but would mean I could avoid getting poked around now. I said I wanted to let it alone if I could. Everything seemed normal for the first half hour. I had a little bit of an issue with latching the baby on (she didn't want to open her mouth wide enough), but not that big of a deal. The doula went home, the midwife went to attend another birth on the ward (someone who came in before me and gave birth after me--hope nobody told her that, how discouraging haha).
However, the nurse attending me found that my bleeding wasn't stopping. They had already given me a shot of pitocin, but they gave another one. It still wasn't stopping. They brought the midwife back in. At this point things became a literal gong show. A whole bunch of nurses and the ob-gyn resident all rushed in. I literally had people on all three sides. On one side, they were jabbing me with yet another shot of pitocin. On the other side, they were trying to get in an IV of saline and ergotamine. And at the bottom, the doctor was attempting to see if there was any retained placenta or other issue causing the bleeding. Again, soooooo glad for gas and air! The Husband had to hold the baby for the next two hours-ish while they dealt with my problem, postpartum hemorrhage.
The IV was its own special torture. The first time they put the IV in, they missed the vein and didn't realize it. I said "My hand feels numb and cold--is that normal?" They didn't even really look, they just said it was normal. A few minutes later I said "My hand feels REALLY strange." They said "It's just the fluids making it feel cold." A few minutes after that, I lifted my hand to look at it, and it was so swollen that the hospital bracelet was digging into my skin! "Uh, is THAT normal?" I said. Then they finally looked at it and realized the problem. To their credit, they were VERY apologetic, and I understand that they were trying to do a million things at once (monitor my heart rate, blood pressure, blood loss, etc).
They tried to put in another IV and it didn't work. So they ended up calling in the head nurse and she finally got the IV in.
Altogether I lost about 1.3 liters of blood. Yikes.
By about 5am, it had calmed down enough that I could be moved to a postpartum recovery room. There was one very big drawback, which was that the mattress for the support person was missing, and no one could find one! My husband had been up since 6am the day before and was wiped out. He tried to sleep in a chair but it didn't work at all (he is a light sleeper).
In the late morning, a cleaning woman was able to do what no one else could, and found a kind of thick exercise mat-thing which wasn't as good as a real futon, but was much better than nothing, so he could finally get a little nap.
I'll probably make a post later about how we settled on the name, but we picked it around 9am. Pippa came to meet her sister just after 11am. We wanted her to be the first to know her name: Mary-Alice Edith. She completely loves her sister and is mostly very gentle with her.
After Pippa met her we started making family calls. That was basically our "task" for the day.
At night we tried to sleep. It was hard because we were so tired and Mary Alice wanted to nurse a lot, but I found it really hard to get her in and out of the bassinet, because it was so high. I didn't mean to but actually fell asleep with her in the hospital bed with me while nursing, woke up several hours later I think. I'm a bit mad no one checked on us because these hospital beds didn't even have solid rails so she could have easily fallen out.
On Saturday, they tested my blood again, and my hemoglobin was not rising, in fact it had dropped slightly, so at first it seemed like we were going to have to stay longer. But the midwife consulted with the attending ob-gyn and decided that even though my results were low, they were high enough that I could be monitored from home, since the bleeding had stabilized. So after lunch I went home.
So I guess that's "the birth story". :)
Side issue: The food. The hospital provided three meals, plus they had a kitchenette on the ward which was supposed to be kept stocked with bread, peanut butter, jam, crackers, cheese slices, and sandwiches; and juice and milk. I was there about 36 hours and we never saw any sandwiches, and cheese slices (they were individually wrapped little natural cheese sticks) only lasted a few hours after a restock, but the bread, crackers, pb, jam and beverages were always there.
For the meals, pretty much everything tasted like it came out of a freezer or a can. The only truly inedible thing was the scrambled egg in my first breakfast. I was famished and I still couldn't finish it. It was that stuff that comes out of a carton, bad enough, and then completely overcooked, and also not really that hot. Awful. It came with Cheerios, a bran muffin, and some kind of fruit. Lunch was macaroni and cheese and vegetables, and it was from frozen but edible and I finished it all. Dinner was a salmon patty with tartar sauce, potato wedges, and green beans. The green beans were too aggressively banal to finish but I did finish the rest. Breakfast Saturday was a hard boiled egg, which is hard to mess up, and thus edible, and an actually pretty delicious lemon cranberry muffin, and cereal and fruit, so that was ok. Lunch was a chicken salad sandwich, with actual identifiable chunks of chicken meat, and cream of mushroom soup, and a kiwi.
The other thing I didn't like about the meal service was that you couldn't order on your own schedule--someone came around, and if you were asleep, they woke you up to order! I tried to order my dinner ahead of time so I could nap uninterrupted, but apparently this is impossible. Boo. I did get woken up and kind of ordered at random.
I better post now because I can't know exactly when I'll next have typing time. Between birth, taking care of a newborn and a toddler, and the blood loss, I'm resting/sleeping mostly. But here's what else I want to share:
--baby naming
--pictures
--hospital vs home birth pros and cons
At night, I nursed Pippa down to sleep, and started getting strong contractions. But I felt like the girl who cried wolf so I took about 15 minutes to tell my doula. That was about 9:30. By 10pm, I knew it was the real thing. Basically as soon as The Husband got home, we drove to the hospital.
Unfortunately when I got in I was only 3cm and technically couldn't be admitted yet. The midwife told me to walk around for "a few hours" and then come back, and when I was 4cm I could be admitted. I actually did some of this laboring in a one-stall bathroom just for privacy (it was very clean). I came back about an hour later (~11:30) and I was 6cm. So yeah, lol. Probably if I had been seen even 15 minutes later I would have been admitted.
I was amazed how different the experience was from last time. Last time I was very much GAH NO TOUCHY. This time, I was laughing and joking between contractions, and during contractions I liked getting counterpressure on my back, holding people's hands, etc. I loved having a doula AND my husband there. They were both fabulous.
I lucked out and got the only room with a tub (currently the deluxe ward with the big tubs that they use for water births was closed due to a nursing shortage). Oh my word. Laboring in the tub is sooooo nice. When the pain was too intense for counterpressure, my husband aimed the shower at my lower back and that helped so much. I actually would be interested in a water birth next time based on this.
Around 1:30am, I felt that pushing was going to happen soon. Suddenly, I got really freaked out. Up until now, labor had actually been great. I hadn't even felt tempted for pain medication! Now I was facing pushing! It was moving too fast. I got panicked and started getting obsessed with tearing. I couldn't let go. I was trying to hold the baby back, which is like trying to put duct tape over a charging rhino--you know it's not going to work for long and it's only going to make things worse!
I ended up asking for Entonox (laughing gas/gas and air) and it was absolutely the right decision. I just needed to take the edge off my panic so I could talk myself down. I did Entonox for a few contractions and in between contractions I said "The baby is going to come down. I can push the baby out. This is the way the baby comes out." etc. I won't say I was completely relaxed, but I was able to stop trying to hold the baby in. (I'm glad I was giving birth in Canada, because apparently in the US they don't use gas and air? Is that true, US mamas?)
Pushing was AWFUL. Oh goodness. It was only 10 minutes in real time but it felt ENDLESS. (Last time pushing was an hour, but didn't feel NEARLY as bad.) I probably totally embarrassed myself by repeatedly begging for the midwife to just pull the baby out (with forceps? IDK, it was not really me talking). Pushing the first time was not nearly this bad, pain-wise or emotionally. I was really glad to have the Entonox for the pushing. I think it was bad for two reasons: the amniotic sac didn't break until five seconds before she came out, and pushing on the sac is harder than pushing on a head; and her head was about a centimeter bigger than Pippa's, and when it's the cervix we're talking about, every cm really counts...
Anyway, once the baby was out and they put her on my chest, my first words were "She's enormous!!!" Hahahaha. Actually she's "only" 8lbs 6oz, 20.5" length, 14" head, which is bigger than average but not epically (it's about 85% on the growth chart in all three dimensions). I thought it was funny because everyone said "Oh, the baby will seem so tiny compared to your toddler" but my first reaction was comparing her to newborn Pippa (who weighed a pound less, was a bit longer, and had a smaller head). It was 2:04am on August 9th.
The midwife examined me and things seemed fine. She said I had a minor tear, which she could sew up if I wanted, but also could be left to heal naturally--it would take longer to heal naturally, but would mean I could avoid getting poked around now. I said I wanted to let it alone if I could. Everything seemed normal for the first half hour. I had a little bit of an issue with latching the baby on (she didn't want to open her mouth wide enough), but not that big of a deal. The doula went home, the midwife went to attend another birth on the ward (someone who came in before me and gave birth after me--hope nobody told her that, how discouraging haha).
However, the nurse attending me found that my bleeding wasn't stopping. They had already given me a shot of pitocin, but they gave another one. It still wasn't stopping. They brought the midwife back in. At this point things became a literal gong show. A whole bunch of nurses and the ob-gyn resident all rushed in. I literally had people on all three sides. On one side, they were jabbing me with yet another shot of pitocin. On the other side, they were trying to get in an IV of saline and ergotamine. And at the bottom, the doctor was attempting to see if there was any retained placenta or other issue causing the bleeding. Again, soooooo glad for gas and air! The Husband had to hold the baby for the next two hours-ish while they dealt with my problem, postpartum hemorrhage.
The IV was its own special torture. The first time they put the IV in, they missed the vein and didn't realize it. I said "My hand feels numb and cold--is that normal?" They didn't even really look, they just said it was normal. A few minutes later I said "My hand feels REALLY strange." They said "It's just the fluids making it feel cold." A few minutes after that, I lifted my hand to look at it, and it was so swollen that the hospital bracelet was digging into my skin! "Uh, is THAT normal?" I said. Then they finally looked at it and realized the problem. To their credit, they were VERY apologetic, and I understand that they were trying to do a million things at once (monitor my heart rate, blood pressure, blood loss, etc).
They tried to put in another IV and it didn't work. So they ended up calling in the head nurse and she finally got the IV in.
Altogether I lost about 1.3 liters of blood. Yikes.
By about 5am, it had calmed down enough that I could be moved to a postpartum recovery room. There was one very big drawback, which was that the mattress for the support person was missing, and no one could find one! My husband had been up since 6am the day before and was wiped out. He tried to sleep in a chair but it didn't work at all (he is a light sleeper).
In the late morning, a cleaning woman was able to do what no one else could, and found a kind of thick exercise mat-thing which wasn't as good as a real futon, but was much better than nothing, so he could finally get a little nap.
I'll probably make a post later about how we settled on the name, but we picked it around 9am. Pippa came to meet her sister just after 11am. We wanted her to be the first to know her name: Mary-Alice Edith. She completely loves her sister and is mostly very gentle with her.
After Pippa met her we started making family calls. That was basically our "task" for the day.
At night we tried to sleep. It was hard because we were so tired and Mary Alice wanted to nurse a lot, but I found it really hard to get her in and out of the bassinet, because it was so high. I didn't mean to but actually fell asleep with her in the hospital bed with me while nursing, woke up several hours later I think. I'm a bit mad no one checked on us because these hospital beds didn't even have solid rails so she could have easily fallen out.
On Saturday, they tested my blood again, and my hemoglobin was not rising, in fact it had dropped slightly, so at first it seemed like we were going to have to stay longer. But the midwife consulted with the attending ob-gyn and decided that even though my results were low, they were high enough that I could be monitored from home, since the bleeding had stabilized. So after lunch I went home.
So I guess that's "the birth story". :)
Side issue: The food. The hospital provided three meals, plus they had a kitchenette on the ward which was supposed to be kept stocked with bread, peanut butter, jam, crackers, cheese slices, and sandwiches; and juice and milk. I was there about 36 hours and we never saw any sandwiches, and cheese slices (they were individually wrapped little natural cheese sticks) only lasted a few hours after a restock, but the bread, crackers, pb, jam and beverages were always there.
For the meals, pretty much everything tasted like it came out of a freezer or a can. The only truly inedible thing was the scrambled egg in my first breakfast. I was famished and I still couldn't finish it. It was that stuff that comes out of a carton, bad enough, and then completely overcooked, and also not really that hot. Awful. It came with Cheerios, a bran muffin, and some kind of fruit. Lunch was macaroni and cheese and vegetables, and it was from frozen but edible and I finished it all. Dinner was a salmon patty with tartar sauce, potato wedges, and green beans. The green beans were too aggressively banal to finish but I did finish the rest. Breakfast Saturday was a hard boiled egg, which is hard to mess up, and thus edible, and an actually pretty delicious lemon cranberry muffin, and cereal and fruit, so that was ok. Lunch was a chicken salad sandwich, with actual identifiable chunks of chicken meat, and cream of mushroom soup, and a kiwi.
The other thing I didn't like about the meal service was that you couldn't order on your own schedule--someone came around, and if you were asleep, they woke you up to order! I tried to order my dinner ahead of time so I could nap uninterrupted, but apparently this is impossible. Boo. I did get woken up and kind of ordered at random.
I better post now because I can't know exactly when I'll next have typing time. Between birth, taking care of a newborn and a toddler, and the blood loss, I'm resting/sleeping mostly. But here's what else I want to share:
--baby naming
--pictures
--hospital vs home birth pros and cons